Jimmy Carr’s dwarf joke broke broadcasting rules, says Ofcom

Broadcasting regulator Ofcom has found that a joke Jimmy Carr made about dwarves on BBC One was capable of causing “considerable offence”.

The comedian was appearing on nightly magazine programme The One Show on November 4 when he said: “I tried to write the shortest joke possible, so I wrote a two-word joke which was: ‘Dwarf shortage’. It’s just so I could pack more jokes into the show.”

After receiving 11 complaints from viewers, Ofcom launched an investigation and today (January 25) determined: “We found this programme broke broadcasting rules because of offensive comments made by comedian Jimmy Carr. We found Jimmy Carr’s comments, which attempted to derive humour from the medical condition of dwarfism, were capable of causing considerable offence.

“Although one of the presenters made an apology towards the end of the programme, we considered it was not sufficient to mitigate the offence caused by Mr Carr’s remarks.”

Carr’s comments were made pre-watershed, shortly after 7pm. The comedian has yet to respond to Ofcom’s decision.

Carr is no stranger to controversy, having previously been forced to backtrack over jokes about people with Down syndrome, servicemen amputees and the death of his grandparents in a car crash which killed seven people.